Nanoparticle Project

Nanoparticle Synthesis Project is one of the NSF funded Nano-Technology related projects, in Binghamton University-SUNY/Mechanical Engineering Department.

This particular project is a joint project between Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science Departments.

This page is designed to be a Knowledge Transfer page for anyone interested to upgrade this project, or work on another project with similar requirements.

Introduction to NSS

Nanoparticle Synthesis Simulator (NSS) is designed to be educational tool about a particular experiment, namely synthesizing Silver Nanoparticles via redox reaction.

The chemicals used in the actual experiment are:

• Liquid medium/Solvent: Toulene
• Metal Salt: Silver Acetate
• Reducing Agent: Tetrabutylammonium Borohydride
• Surfactant/Capping agent: Dodecylamine

Where Nanoparticle size depends on temperature, concentration of reactants, time and the surfactant used in the experiment.

The simulation tries to mimic the real laboratory synthesis experiment, allowing the users to interact with the lab setting with virtual beakers, flasks, etc.

The target audience of the simulation is college freshmen and high school students.

Macromedia Flash 8 w/ ActionScript 2.0 in NSS

Introduction to Flash

Flash is designed to be

Library

Library panel on the right hand side of the Flash environment is also very important. It serves as the container of all the symbols used in the project.

Unlike other applications such as "Microsoft Visual Studio", Library in Flash is project/file specific. So the library contains only those symbols used in

the corresponding flash file.

In order to add something to the library:

ActionScript 2.0 as a Scripting Language

Timeline Control

Common ActionScript 2.0 commands for timeline control include:

• gotoAndPlay(frameNumber);
• gotoAndStop(frameNumber);
• play();
• stop();

Browser/Network Control

A very common browser control command is:

• getURL(URL,window,method);
• getURL(URL,window);

It allows the user to redirect to an URL using some form of interaction such as a button. The "window" parameter decides in which window the URL should be

connected to. "0" lets the user redirect from the current page to the URL, whereas a "1" opens up the URL in another window/tab.

Another comment that might be useful is:

• loadVariablesNum(fileName, window,method);

which allows the user to pass variables from the flash file to a server side scripting language. In NSS it is used to pass variables to a PHP file, which in turn sends out emails. It uses the following code:

loadVariablesNum("emailer.php", 0,"POST");

The "emailer.php" file in turn takes the variables and uses the following code to send out emails:

<?$subject  =  $_POST["subject"];
  $message  =  $_POST["message"];
  $header = "From: nssquizresults@gmail.com\n";
  $header .= "Reply-To: nssquizresults@gmail.com\n";
  $header .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion() . "\n";
  $header .= "X-Priority: 1"; 
  mail("nanoparticlesynthesissimulator@gmail.com", $subject, $message, $header);?>

Timeline

Timeline is the single most important window in the flash environment no matter which version is used.

Basic Tools

Text Tool

The important fact regarding this tool is that it's type can be one of the following:

• Static Text
• Dynamic Text
• Input Text

Depending on the type it will act differently. A static text, as its name suggests, cannot be changed during the play of the flash animation. A dynamic text on the other hand can be manipulated by accessing its "text" property.

VariableName.text = "This is a text!";

Components

Pressing Ctrl+F11 in Flash will open up the components window. This set of elements contain most of the GUI elements that are needed for user input.

Drag/Drop Animation

Drag and Drop animation can be achieved with the following code template:

//instanceNameOfObject is place holder for the actual variable name of the object to be dragged and dropped
//instanceNameOfTarget is place holder for the actual variable name of the target object defining the correct area for a drop
//"_x" and "_y" are coordinate properties of the abject
//oldSpotX and oldSpotY are place holders for the objects old coordinates
onMouseMove = function () {
	updateAfterEvent();
};
instanceNameOfObject.onPress = function() {
	this.startDrag();
};
instanceNameOfObject.onRelease = function() {
	this.stopDrag();
	checkTarget(this);
};
instanceNameOfObject.onReleaseOutside = function() {
	this.stopDrag();
	checkTarget(this);
};
function checkTarget(drag) {
	if (drag.hitTest(instanceNameOfTarget)) {
		// do whatever you want i.e: gotoAndStop(2);
	} else {
		instanceNameOfObject._x = oldSpotX;
		instanceNameOfObject._y = oldSpotY;
	}
}

Current Time

In order to get the current time in flash..

ProEngineer in NSS

3-D Animations using ProEngineer

How to produce 3-D animations using ProE..